Parents accuse lawmakers of not providing resources for education.

Parents from Duval County and across Florida filed suit against the state’s education system Wednesday, setting off legal and political battles over the future of Florida schools.

The lawsuit accuses the state’s leaders of failing to provide the necessary resources for education, leading to low graduation rates, unsafe schools and higher property taxes. It draws on a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1998 calling for Florida to make education a “paramount duty” of the state.

“Basically, it’s trying to achieve a recognition that the constitution of Florida means something,” said Thom Rumberger, one of the lawyers pressing the suit.

But Florida Education Commissioner Eric Smith said he was disappointed with the legal action, saying it casts the state’s education system in an unnecessarily negative light.

“It’s unfortunate that this lawsuit diminishes the significant progress that has been made by our children over the last decade and simply ignores the performance of a state that is clearly outpacing the nation,” Smith said.

“I believe Florida’s education system has achieved incredible results that clearly speak for themselves and are not represented in this complaint,” he said.

State officials say rising test scores on national tests show students are doing better.

Kathleen Oropeza, one of the leaders of Fund Education Now, a grassroots group listed as a plaintiff, said the state was short-changing education long before the economy turned south.

“In this case, our Legislature doesn’t appear to — whether it’s in good times or not — have the will to make education a priority,” she said.

Four of the plaintiffs in the complaint are from Jacksonville.

They include Eunice Barnum, who lives in the Sherwood Forrest area on the Northside. Barnum is also the guardian of two other plaintiffs, Janiyah Williams, a second-grader at Rutledge Pearson Elementary, and Jacque Williams, a kindergartener at the same school.

Pearson was an “F” school three years ago but moved up to a “B” grade two years ago and an “A” last year.

Barnum said both of her charges have disabilities, and she doesn’t believe they’re getting the same quality of care as all children in the school. She also doesn’t believe African-American students are getting the same quality of education.

“I believe not to educate a child is the worse form of abuse because it leaves lifelong scars,” Barnum said.

Though a large part of the complaint said the state isn’t funding education properly, Barnum said she doesn’t think it’s a lack of funding that’s a problem. She thinks it’s how the money is used.

Other school-funding suits have taken years or even decades to make their way through the courts.

But lawyers involved in the case say they believe the state’s “paramount duty” clause — generally regarded as one of the strongest in the nation — could make the suit in Florida easier for the plaintiffs to win than those in other states.

“We are many steps ahead of where they started because of our constitutional amendment,” said Jodi Siegel of Southern Legal Counsel, a public interest law firm helping to spearhead reforms.

The lawyers suing the state have a bipartisan flavor: Rumberger represented the GOP during redistricting in 1992 and was general counsel for former President George H.W. Bush’s campaigns in 1988 and 1992, and Bob Dole’s campaign in 1996. Another attorney handling the case is former Democratic House Speaker Jon Mills, who helped craft the 1998 education amendment.

“This is not a partisan attack,” Rumberger said.

But even as the plaintiffs tried to distance themselves from the political fray, Democrats pounced on the opportunity to blast Republicans for skimping on school spending.

“I am hopeful that this lawsuit will shake some sense into a Legislature that has failed to adequately fund public education,” said Sen. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, a candidate for attorney general who has promised to file a similar suit if elected.

Sen. Steve Wise, a Jacksonville Republican who heads the Senate committee overseeing funding for public education, agreed that school funding is a problem. But he said the plaintiffs’ efforts are counterproductive.

“What we’re going to end up doing is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on attorneys’ fees,” he said.

Linda Kobert, another leader of Funding Education Now, said the state doesn’t have to do that.

“It would cost a lot less money,” she said, “if they decided not to spend time and money defending the lawsuit and instead decided to obey the constitution.”

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a similar complaint Nov. 5 that the state violated the constitutional provision in Palm Beach County, citing low graduation rates there.

Most of us remember the Moon landing. --A time of great national pride.

AND GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT IN EDUCATION.

As long as we were in a contest to get to the moon first, we had a blank check for education, particularly Math and Science. Over 90% of American children attended public schools. Remember the drill practices for The Bomb? Talk about gubmint indoctrination.

In alittle more than a generation, we have grown to revile public education and the notion of government involvement in education. Why, hypocrites?

- instituted FCAT (just as the Republican-controlled federal legislature passed No Child Left Behind). Any one wanna guess how much $$ we pay to test, score, print, ship, train, remediate, pay for remediation products, pay to oversee compliance, crunch data, organize and maintain, pay for technology upgrades/servers to manage data, techies to install, techies to repair, techies to maintain. Shall I continue?

-is in bed with firms such as Pearson and Scholastic, companies which receive multi-gazillion $$ contracts for testing, remediation, consulting, texts, etc. Anyone ever done any research about how many kids pass the FCAT once they fail? --And yet we have no problem hiring those firms year after year.

-mandated that 'Level I and II' readers enroll in Intensive Reading--in Duval County alone, we have over 750 reading teachers that we didn't 5 years ago. These are folks who have been newly trained to teach already-struggling readers to improve. Do the Math: 750 x $60,000 =